System requirements for Structural Engineers

[Richard Molnar]

Hi All,

We are a Structural Engineering office using Archicad for many many years now. We built our workstations in 2016 following the AC19 and AC20 system requirements on Graphisoft's website and the workstations worked well enough for many many years, but it is finally time to build a new one as the old ones are not strong enough. Over the years we learned a few things, but the 2 main things are related to the CPU and Graphics card.

We work a lot with imported IFC and REVIT models and we noticed that for a lot of the operations that are related to the imported models Archicad uses only 1 core or sometimes only 1 thread from the CPU. Since it is the same in AC27 we ended up with the conclusion that speed/core is more important than the number of cores. If any of the people here could recommend an intel CPU (i7 or i9) we would greatly appreciate it.

Since we don't render any photos we found that the current NVIDIA Quadro graphics card is overpriced and often not strong enough to navigate in 3D (that has imported models of large projects). I would greatly appreciate any recommendations for a graphics card that could help.

Although I am more of a CAD technician than an IT professional I do build my own PCs for home and work so I did come up with a possible new build back in October 2023. Please check it and let me know if you would replace any parts:

Case: CORSAIR 4000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE

CPU: Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-13900K (Up to 5.8GHz) 36MB Cache

Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS MASTER (LGA1700, DDR5, USB 3.2, PCIe 5.0, WIFI6E) - ARGB Ready

RAM: 64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 4800MHz (2 x 32GB)

Graphics: 12GB ASUS TUF GEFORCE RTX 4070 Ti OC EDITION - HDMI, DP NONE (BRACKET INCLUDED AS STANDARD ON 4070 Ti AND ABOVE)

Storage: 1TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 3500 MB/W)

Power supply: CORSAIR 750W RMe SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET

CPU cooling: CORSAIR ICUE LINK H100i RGB HIGH PERFORMANCE CPU COOLER (250W TDP)

Thermal Paste: ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND

OPS: Windows 11 Professional 64 Bit

Thank you in advance.

Operating system used: Windows

[MASz]

Hi there,

I think your specs look good. As you've said, the hardware does get underutilised.

You may refer to my thread here, be aware that AC27 has performance issues that Graphisoft are currently refusing to acknowledge or address: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Modeling/AC27-3d-window-performance-broken-on-Windows-developers...

You could try to run those workarounds in the videos and see if it makes a difference. Try to turn on the shadows to "overload" the 3d window, and you might have a 3x FPS increase. I can get 144fps with my setup, even on complicated scenes. Again, Graphisoft does not seem interested that this is possible.

I strongly doubt the Quadro has any benefit here, from what I understand it is for more niche applications. I would just stick to the normal gamer cards. More powerful for cheaper. I use a 3090, which is kind of the minimum for my work in Unreal Engine. That actually utilises the card and the VRAM 100%.

With regards to 2d, you can also play around with the drawing infrastructure in regedit. This can perform differently under different scenarios.
Open Registry Editor and navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GRAPHISOFT\ARCHICAD\Archicad 26.0.0 INT RC1\Graphix
Change the RenderingAPI value data from 0 to -1

Even with my specs, my performance leaves quite a lot to be desired in 2d. I am still not quite clear how plan performance relates to the CPU and GPU. Graphisoft have not provided much clarity around this topic and I am not sure they understand it themselves.

I run an i9-13900KF, and while it is a nice CPU there are some serious issues with it. My CPU should basically be RMA, but I haven't gone through that step because it would be debilitating. Keep in mind that the CPU uses turboboost which boosts the speed of the CPU's fastest cores. This does get utilised in Archicad so it should result in better performance. The issue is that it can sometime result in Archicad crashes in 3d to desktop, as well as many other applications. This is actually considered a hardware fault, stock settings are not supposed to do this. It gets very hot as well. The workaround is to set all Active Turbo Ratios to manual at x54 in BIOS. I have also adjusted my voltages. Only worth changing all this if you are running into crashes. My setup at the moment seems pretty stable and it's still very fast, so I think it's ok. In a program like Unreal Engine, it utilises those multiple cores to compile shaders and operations like that. I went up from an old 8 core i7, and the difference is very nice.

You can also reach out to me privately if you want me to test any files in advance, given that my hardware configuration is pretty similar. Practically all my projects run close to the 144fps mark, including projects with lots of Revit IFC geometry, but only after the workaround.

[Laszlo Nagy]

The config looks very good, I have a few comments:

- I would go for the latest gen CPU, specifically, either the 14900K or the 14900KF for a bit less if you do not need an integrated GPU in your CPU, which you might not want if you will have such a strong dedicated GPU card. 

- Unfortunately, it is true that the core functions of BIM applications, including Archicad, can utilize multi-core CPUs only till a certain point and so will give the best performance with CPUs with the highest single-core performance (except for a few scenarios where multi-core performance can be utilized very well, like rendering), which is why I would recommend the 14900K, which has single-core speed of 6.0 MHz max.

- I see you have selected a motherboard that supports PCIe 5.0, but you have not selected either a PCIe 5.0 GPU (none exists today) or a PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD. So, a PCIe 5.0 motherboard makes sense only if you plan to upgrade to these later. Otherwise, you can do with a motherboard that supports PCIe 4.0, which is much cheaper.

[Richard Molnar]

Hi MAsz,

Thank you so much for the long and very detailed comment. A few of my friends recommended AMD and one of them has a 2 years old AMD machine. He will do a test for me. Depending on the test I might consider recommending AMD. I was told there is a significant price difference between AMD and Intel.

Another friend of mine sent me a link to a benchmark site, which I found very useful for our problem.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
There are other pages for other parts, so this might be the most helpful link for those who are considering building a new PC and want to compare it to their current one.

I am one of those moderately professional users who are not afraid to use the Registry Editor, however, I try to do it only when it feels necessary. So first we will build the new PC and will see how it works.

Thank you for your advice.

[Richard Molnar]

Hi Laszlo,

Koszonom szepen a tanacsot. 🙂
Thank you so much for the advice.

Indeed, we won't need an integrated GPU so we will definitely choose a CPU that doesn't have it.

Judging from your automatic signature you have the same setup as my friend. He just tested one file a minute ago and didn't have much issue.

What would be your experience and opinion in the subject of AMD vs Intel when it is about 3D navigation and behaviour in Archicad?

There is a significant difference in price, but if we overlook that and focus on to build a PC that is good for another 6 years at least, which one would be more reliable? I know it is hard to answer such a question since the technology is continuously advancing so I am just curious about your opinion.

Thank you for the advice about the motherboard. This reminds me that I wanted to use M.2 NVMe SSD instead of the normal SSD. It made a noticeable difference in performance when we replaced the old SSD to the M.2 about 3 years ago.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Hi Richárd,

The link you provided in your previous post is the same I use to make my CPU-related decisions.

I have very good experience with the AMD processor. I built my rig in 2017, used a Ryzen7 1700X CPU and it served me well for over 6 years now. I just recently upgraded it to a Ryzen 5900X, when I realized that my motherboard manufacturer recently released a BIOS upgrade that lets me use 5000-series Ryzens in my motherboard since those CPUs still use the AM4 socket. (The 7000-series uses a newer AM5 socket). So now, with a new CPU and new faster RAM, I have 2-3 more years before I need to buy a new machine. This was really great news for me because I was about to put together a new PC that has PCIe 5.0 components, including the motherboard, NVMe SSD, and GPU (actually, no PCIe 5.0 GPUs exist at the moment, but the motherboard supports it), but I found the technology is still very expensive, although provides great performance increases. Now I am happy I have a pretty fast machine for a few more years, and when it is time for me to build a new rig, PCIe 5.0 will be mainstream and will be reasonably priced.

So, in summary, I was and I am completely satisfied with my AMD system, and I chose it exactly for the same reason you mentioned: better price/performance ratio than Intel at that time.

The NVMe SSD was also a great choice, it provides a tremendous performance boost over regular SSDs.

Now, currently, the CPU landscape is different because in the last 2-3 years, Intel has finally got its act together and managed to switch from a 14 nm manufacturing process to a more advanced 7 nm process, and its shows. If you go to the website you mentioned

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

and compare the Single Core performances of the Intel i9 14900KF and the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, they are very close in price, but the Intel is about 10% faster. Generally, Single Core performance is more important to Archicad (and BIM applications in general) than multi-core. What I see is that maybe an AMD 7900X would be the best choice because it has almost the same Single Core performance as the 7950X, but it is about 20% cheaper. (Actually, this is the same reason I bought the 5900X instead of the pricier 5950X CPU - same Single Core performance, but 25% cheaper.)

So, depending on how much money you have, I would go for either the Intel i9 14900KF or the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X (20% cheaper for only 10% less performance).

But both Intel and AMD are very solid, AMD has become a strong and reliable player in the CPU game in the last several years, and I trust their products just as I trust Intel products.

[Mick_NZ]

Hi Richard 

I've actually just ordered pretty much the exact machine you described, hoping to have it tomorrow or the next day. 

Specs: "14th Gen Intel Raptor Lake Core i9 14900K 24 Core 32 Thread 6.0GHz Turbo Boost CPU |SilverStone PermaFrost Series PF360-ARGB-V2 360MMRadiator Triple Fan White AIO Liquid Cooler | INNO3D NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070Ti X3-OC 12GB GDDR6X Triple Fan White Graphics Card | MSI PRO Z790-A MAX WiFi Series Full-ATX Z790 Chipset RGB PCI-E 5.0 DDR5 MotherBoard | 64GB (2x32G Kit) Kingston Hyper X FURY RGBBlack 5600MHz CL36 DDR5 Premium RAM|4TB Samsung 990 PRO Series PCI-E 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s Write | Phanteks Eclipse Series G500A ARGBHigh-Airflow Edition White Tempered Glass Full Size Tower Case + 3x Phanteks RGB LED Fans | 1000W Thermalright TG-1000 White Series 88+ GOLD Efficiency Certified Modular PCI-E 5.0 PS"

If you like, I can try out any of your files for you and respond as to how it runs, no trouble.

Honestly, it does seem that the Macs are better all round, the code seems to run faster and more stable... but for the computer I ordered it's under $5k for this setup and, wait for it, over $13k for the Mac equivalent. So more than TWICE the price and its isn't twice as good!!

Changing from my much loved but now outdated i7 10700k w/ 2070 super and 64gb DDR4 ram... so will be interesting to see how the new setup goes with my larger files and twinmotion. 

Mick 

[Richard Molnar]

Hi Mick,

Thank you for your reply. Your change from i7 10700K to i9 14900K won't be as drastic as ours from i7 6700K. 😅

Thank you for the offer, but judging from the test my friend made on a 2-year-old AMD machine, I think we won't have the same problems as we have now. But I do hope that Graphisoft will eventually solve the single-threaded operations problem. That would be the complete gamechanger unless everybody switches to Archicad.

Yes, I agree with you on the subject of Mac. I can't see the reason behind the hype around Macs. The hardware is only half of the equation. The other half is the experience of the user. Just like you said, with today's technology, the difference in performance between a PC and a Mac is not that significant enough to be worth the price.

I hope you will find joy in your new PC.

[MASz]

Graphisoft's priorities seem to be about optimising for Mac, whereas Windows gets neglected. At least, that's what it feels like. They are advertising right now how much faster Archicad is with the M3 chips, while I'm having all these performance problems on Windows. I don't know how it necessarily Archicad compares with equivalent hardware, but we may have quite a different experience when it comes to performance. I would say that Windows users should be demanding optimised performance from Graphisoft.